New York Mets ace Johan Santana (r.) shares his 2006 American League Cy Young award with his agent, Ed Greenberg and his wife, Lynne, who succumbed to melanoma in 2007.

She always looked like the happiest person in the world, Johan Santana recalls, and he is laughing as he tells his favorite Lynne Greenberg story, the one where she rescued him from a difficult bind on his trip to New York to pick up his first Cy Young Award.

Santana had been so busy, he forgot to buy presents to bring back to Venezuela for his young daughter. Lynne volunteered, coming back with darling outfits that were a hit when Santana got home. "It was," Santana says, "a great, great thing.

"She was always smiling, always having fun," Santana adds. "It's hard to believe she is gone."

Greenberg was the wife of one of Santana's agents, Ed Greenberg, and her death from melanoma in 2007 at 42 so profoundly affected the Met ace that he joined the fight against skin cancer. On Monday, a Mets off-day, he is hosting the Johan Santana All-Star Bowling Classic at Lucky Strike Manhattan to raise money for his foundation, which will donate the proceeds to programs dedicated to fighting skin cancer.

It is his first major charity effort in New York, although his foundation has been active in Venezuela, including buying a fire truck for his hometown of Tovar Merida and outfitting the local hospital with medical supplies. Santana insisted Ed Greenberg be the president of the foundation's U.S. arm.

"We need to make people realize how bad this is and that it can happen to anybody," Santana says. "We are all human beings, regardless of who you are or what you do. We are human beings and we're exposed to everything. You go outside, you're exposed. At the end of the day, we're all fragile when it comes to illness and disease."

It was certainly nothing Ed or Lynne had ever thought about. They first met at a barbecue thrown by mutual friends from SUNY-Albany and started dating when school started again. They were married for 15 years and had two children, Jordan, now 11, and Emily, now 8. They worked away at their careers, Lynne in event planning and sports marketing, Ed as the chief financial officer of Peter Greenberg & Associates, the firm he runs with his brother, Peter. Santana has been their client since 1999.

Lynne first had a melanoma removed from her scalp in 1996 and the disease came back in 2004, each recurrence more severe. For two years, Ed Greenberg says, the lesions were local and could be removed, but "it spread, and once it spreads, it spreads very quickly. There's really no cure for it.

"It's touching to me that Johan is intent on raising awareness of melanoma," says Ed Greenberg, who has since remarried. "It speaks to who he is as a person, his human side."

When Santana came to New York in January of 2007 to accept the 2006 AL Cy Young Award, his second, he made a dedication of sorts at the Baseball Writers' Association of America dinner where the lefthander got the trophy. Santana stood at the podium and talked briefly about Lynne, adding "God willing, everything will be OK." She died a few days later.

"Here he is accepting a Cy Young and he's thinking about me, my family, and what we were going through at the time," Ed says. "He's got a warm heart."

This is the second time Santana has held a bowling event for his foundation - as a member of the Twins in 2007, he hosted one and rolled a 160, he says, and Joe Mauer threw a 220. Santana hopes it can become an annual event.

While not a regular bowler, Santana does own a ball painted to look like a baseball, although he admits it's not as easy to command as, say, his famed changeup. "I'm fine if at least one pin is going down," he says.

The big thing, of course, is that the tournament "can help as much as possible," Santana says. "It's the beginning of something very, very important for me, for my family."